Cine-Excess is an international film festival and conference devoted to the critical study of global cult film traditions, and has been running annually since 2007. Cine-Excess hosts UK theatrical premieres and exclusive screenings, visiting international filmmakers, a themed conference and media mentoring sessions for young filmmakers.
Cine-Excess has a strong tradition of attracting global cult filmmakers as guests to the event, who attend as recipients of the annual Cine-Excess Lifetime Achievement Award or Innovator of Horror Award. Some of the previous filmmaking guests of honour to have attended Cine-Excess include Pam Grier, Ti West, Brandon Cronenberg, Jen and Sylvia Soska, Catherine Breillat, Peter Strickland, Roger Corman, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, Vanessa Redgrave, Sergio Martino, Franco Nero, John Landis, Enzo G. Castellari, Nicholas Vince, Barbie Wilde, Simon Bamford, Doug Bradley, Brian Yuzna, Ruggero Deodato, Victoria Price, Stuart Gordon, Jeff Lieberman, Pete Walker, Norman J. Warren and Jake West.
In 2021 a new Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel will be launched to promote a selection of key films screened at the annual festival. The Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel currently streams on Amazon Prime Video UK, with a focus on promoting diverse and diasoporic visions of cinema.
In terms of its programming strategy, Cine-Excess hosts a range of UK theatrical premieres and exclusive retrospective screenings from around the world, but with a strong focus on the following global territories: Europe, North America/Canada, Central America, Australia and the Global South. The festival also retains a wide definition of cult film that encompasses a broad range of horror cycles, unconventional thrillers, revisionist or hybrid genres (such as science fiction, gangster cinema, dark love dramas or the western), action cycles or fantastic titles that can also be linked to wider national film traditions.
Cine-Excess remains committed to issues of diversity and inclusion, and this ethos informs both the annual festival and filmmakers promoted across the new Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel.
As well as hosting an online Distinctive Visions event dedicated to emerging cult and horror directors (March 2024), our main annual festival will run in October 2024 with this year's theme focused on 'Images of the Family in Cult and Horror Cinema.'
The October 2024 event will feature both physical and online events that include a film festival season of UK premieres, visiting international filmmaker awards and retrospectives and a themed academic conference.
As part of Cine-Excess 2024 we are seeking feature film and documentary submissions that can be screened in the following 2 categories:
1. Cine-Excess Distinctive Visions - Innovative and challenging visions of film that will screen at our online event in March 2024.
2. Cine-Excess 2024: Feature films from first time or established directors, whose work will be screened either in theatres or online at our main October 2024 event.
The submission deadlines for the Distinctive Visions March 2024 Online Festival are:
Friday 5th January 2024 (Early Bird submissions) and Friday 5th February 2024 (Regular submissions)
The submission deadlines for the main Cine-Excess Festival in October 2024 are:
Friday 19th April 2024 (Early Bird submissions), Friday 12th July 2024 (Regular festival submissions) and Friday 16th August (late festival submission/final deadline).
Festival entrants must ensure that their films are either UK premieres, or are not been widely distributed (either theatrically or on UK home entertainment platforms) before submitting work for competition at Cine-Excess.
Entrants who wish to put their film forward consideration on the Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel should specify this in their covering letter, and ensure that their films are currently not being distributed on UK home entertainment platforms (such as digital /terrestrial/satellite) before submitting their work.
